Free Sweet Revenge by Andrea Penrose

you?”
    I can take care of myself. The words were on the tip of her tongue but she held them back.
    “Ah, I had a feeling your oh so clever brain would grasp the logic in that.” She heard him move away. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
    Logic. Arianna felt her way to the back of the shed and found a sliver of space on the rough planks. Curling up against the stone-cold clay pots, she tried to still her spinning thoughts and focus on making sense of the last few days. It seemed that in hunting down her own quarry, she had unwittingly stepped into a nest of vipers. Slithering serpents with bared fangs, coiled to strike. She drew her knees to her chest, aware of the prickling of gooseflesh along her arms.
    So close, so close, and then she had turned careless in her last few steps. The question was, would their bite prove fatal?
    Lord Concord and Lord Hamilton.
    She had crossed an ocean to pursue those two cold-blooded reptiles. It had been a shock to learn from Lady Spencer that Hamilton had broken his neck six months ago during a drunken carriage race from London to Brighton. But that still left Concord, and she had always considered him to be the more dangerous of the two.
    That he might be dangerous enough to dare an attack on the Prince Regent added an unexpected twist.
    And suddenly her quest seemed tied in a Gordian knot.
    Arianna thought of the three items she had taken from Lady Spencer’s desk. For now, they were her only tangible clues to cutting through the secrets surrounding her father’s death.
    Revenge. Redemption. For years, those twin desires had driven her onward. But in her heart, she also wanted to know the truth.
     
    Saybrook shifted in his seat, his boots scuffing softly over the minister’s Turkey carpet. “And so, after a quick check of the surroundings showed no sign of the chef,” he explained, “I thought it best to leave the pursuit to the guards and returned to the town house, in order to arrange for the body to be taken away.” A pause. “I assumed you would want me to dispose of the problem quickly and discreetly.”
    “How very thorough of you,” said Grentham, his expression remaining inscrutable.
    “I try to be,” replied Saybrook blandly.
    The minister tapped his fingers on the three sheets of paper that Saybrook had handed over. “Tell me again precisely what happened.”
    “The details are spelled out in my report.” Another pause. “Milord.”
    “Nonetheless, I should like to hear you recount them again,” said Grentham softly. “Assuming you haven’t suffered too great a shock.”
    Saybrook carefully repeated the sequence of events, omitting any mention of the chef’s transformation from “he” to “she.”
    “Two shots, you say.” Grentham fixed him with a long look. “And yet Major Crandall was accorded to be a crack shot. I wonder how two bullets managed to go so badly astray?”
    He shrugged. “I couldn’t really say, sir. In the heat of battle, strange things happen.”
    “Strange things happen,” repeated the minister softly.
    Saybrook sat in steadfast silence.
    “I can’t help but wonder . . .” Grentham smoothed the creased papers, and then slid them into a dossier. “Have you any idea as to why Crandall would try to kill the Frenchman while you were interrogating him?”
    “No.”
    “And you wouldn’t care to hazard a guess?”
    “I don’t care for parlor games,” replied Saybrook. “If you wish to hear people engage in idle speculation, I am sure you have plenty of lackeys outside your door who will be only too happy to oblige you.”
    “You’re a good deal more facile with your tongue than you are with a weapon, Lord Saybrook.” The minister leaned back in his chair. “I put you in charge of this investigation and what do I have to show for it? Within less than half a day, the Prince’s assassin has escaped, my military attaché is dead, and you—you’re barely able to crawl through my door with a few pathetic pieces of